Megalomaniacs on Film: The Great Eight

It’s been a harrowing four years to say the least, hopefully the end of which is tolled tonight, a good time to remember that Trump is neither the first nor the last of megalomaniacs. Indeed, this archetype is popular in film, as exhibited in My Great Eight Megalomaniacs:

8. Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg), The Social Network (2010) “Look, a guy who builds a nice chair doesn’t owe money to everyone who has ever built a chair, okay? They came to me with an idea, I had a better one.”

7. Idi Amin (Forest Whittaker), The Last King of Scotland (2006) “You dare try to poison me? After everything I gave you? I am Idi Amin! President-for-life and ruler of Uganda. I am the father of Africa.”

6. Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando), Apocalypse Now (1979) “You have no right to call me a murderer. You have a right to kill me. You have a right to do that… but you have no right to judge me. It’s impossible for words to describe what is necessary to those who do not know what horror means.”

5. Charles Foster Kane (Orson Welles), Citizen Kane (1941) “Don’t worry about me, Gettys! Don’t worry about me! I’m Charles Foster Kane! I’m no cheap, crooked politician, trying to save himself from the consequences of his crimes!”

4. Blake (Alec Baldwin), Glengarry Glen Ross (1992) “That watch costs more than your car. I made $970,000 last year. How much’d you make? You see, pal, that’s who I am, and you’re nothing.”

3. Professor Marvel (Frank Morgan), The Wizard of Oz (1939) “Back where I come from there are men who do nothing all day but good deeds. They are called phila… er, phila… er, yes, er, Good Deed Doers.”

2. Dr. Strangelove (Peter Sellers), How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) “Of course, the whole point of a Doomsday machine is lost if you keep it a secret! Why didn’t you tell the world?”

1. Don Lope de Aguirre (Klaus Kinski), Aguirre Wrath of God (1972) “If, I, Aguirre, want the birds to drop dead from the trees the birds will drop dead from the trees. I am the Wrath of God! The earth I walk upon sees me and quakes! But whoever follows me and the river, will win untold riches.”

Dennis Hopper’s “The Last Movie”

Like Micheal Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate, critics have attacked and mocked the excessive ways of Dennis Hopper’s The Last Movie. Rather than focus on the film – the imagery, characterizations and experimental structure – they honed in on the sensational stories of orgies and cocaine consumption because that’s what sells. The truth is, while Hopper’s film may be flawed, it is seminal – directionless, faded and disturbing. Under the tutelage of Chilean director Alejandro Jodorowsky, Hopper constructed an experimental narrative – including a title card flashing missing scene as if we are watching a rush – continually reminding the viewer of what this is – just a film.While it’s not earth-shattering genius, neither was Easy Rider nor even Midnight Cowboy or Apocalypse Now for that matter, but it’s genuine and a far cry from the processed images of today, all seemingly rendered from a rendering of a rendering. Personal and real, The Last Movie itself will be rendered soon enough. “Love is everywhere.”

Mute and Dense, Staring Back

It stared back, mute and dense, the black eyes, unknowing. a-hot-girls-photo-mirrors-2Seeing it, so dull, so obviously a mutation of a mutation with ridiculous purpose, its bloated sense of self, misguided as to think – think? – it had significance, like it actually had ideas that meant something. Screenshot (100)I looked across it, at the passing light and the shadows coming up, and tried not to think.Screenshot (83)I swung out before either of us knew it, and smacked the glass hard, indenting the top half, cracking it down the center. It was a good hit. Solid. It looked like a whale breaching, half out of the water, turning away, the stratification of its underbelly completely out, coming together at the top edge. Breaching humpback whale in TongaMy face was on one side of that now, the same, just warped at the edge by the balene indentation It didn’t reflect. The sides of the glass pushed out, the wood behind. 600full-thru-the-mirror-screenshotMy hand was bleeding.